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LSE announces Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality

Thursday 30 April 2026
woman walking up the stairs of the Arthur Lewis Building
The Sir Arthur Lewis Building, home of the Department of Economics at LSE

LSE is delighted to announce a new centre for the study of entrepreneurship and wealth inequality, funded by a transformational $5 million gift from the James M and Cathleen D Stone Foundation.

The Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality at LSE will bring together world-leading experts to provide new evidence on the relationship between entrepreneurship and wealth inequality and inform the development of better policy design.

Entrepreneurial activity plays a critical role in driving economic growth and is also closely connected to wealth concentration. Despite the importance of business ownership at the top of the wealth distribution, very little is known about the entrepreneurial content of these businesses and their contribution to dynamism, innovation and growth.

Advancing the study of entrepreneurship and wealth inequality

The Stone Centre at LSE will significantly advance the study of entrepreneurship and wealth inequality in three key dimensions:

  • Improving the quality of available data on income and asset ownership to allow proper measurement of the impact of entrepreneurship on wealth inequality.
  • Developing sophisticated models for estimating the short and long-term impacts of various policies regulating entrepreneurship and inequality.
  • Overcoming the practical, legal and political barriers to implementing effective policy.

The Centre will disseminate its findings through public events and by establishing international collaboration networks of researchers exploring similar topics. It will also help develop future generations of inequality researchers through PhD and post-doctoral fellowships, grants for early career researchers and the development of new undergraduate teaching modules.

Professor Camille Landais and Dr Kate Smith will serve as co-Directors of the Stone Centre, which will be hosted by STICERD (Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines) at LSE. The core team of investigators will be based in the Department of Economics, with additional collaboration across STICERD and other research centres at the School.

Collaborating with a network of centres

The Stone Centre at LSE will be the fourteenth member of a network of Stone Foundation-supported wealth inequality centres based in universities across North America, Europe and Asia. As the first with an explicit focus on entrepreneurship, it will fill an important gap while collaborating closely with researchers based in other Stone Centres around the world. The Centre will formally launch in Autumn 2026.

Welcoming the announcement, Professor Landais, Director of STICERD at LSE said,
“Now is the time to create a step change in this important, yet currently under-investigated, agenda.

“With support from the Stone Foundation, LSE can deepen our understanding of the nexus between wealth inequality and entrepreneurship, shaping the knowledge frontier in this area. It is a privilege to join the constellation of Stone Centres that are already pushing knowledge boundaries on specific facets of wealth inequality to create a more equitable society.”

LSE President and Vice Chancellor, Professor Larry Kramer, added, “Across the world, wealth inequality is growing, while political and economic systems struggle to meet even the most basic needs of their citizens.

“Democracies can’t seem to cope, which is causing mistrust to grow – in politics, in our public institutions, even in our fellow citizens. Addressing issues like these are at the core of LSE’s mission, while the Stone Foundation has long been at the centre of advancing understanding and driving change around wealth inequality.

The Stone Centre at LSE will link the School’s world-leading social science research with the Foundation’s extraordinary global network, creating a new hub for inquiry, collaboration, and action to shape a more equitable future.”

Rigorous, independent scholarship

Jim Stone, Chairman of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation, said, “My wife Cathy and I are proud to support the new Stone Centre at the London School of Economics.

“Wealth inequality is one of the defining issues of our time, and it deserves rigorous, independent scholarship — including potential trade-offs between limits to extreme wealth inequality and entrepreneurship. I have long believed we must take care that the remedies applied to excessive wealth concentration are never worse than the malady itself. Finding that balance requires the kind of serious, evidence-based inquiry the Stone Centre is built to provide, and LSE is an excellent home for it."